LGBTQ Reporter on the Equality Act: Adding Religious Protections Would Be ‘Opening a Can of Worms’
‘That’s the sticking point with LGBTQ rights advocates and some of the religious groups which is how do you create a separate set of exemptions for one protected class of people’
The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.
Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.
End of dialog window.
EXCERPT:
SOSIN: “So, religious exemptions are really going to be the sticking point here because a lot of people feel like it is their sincerely held religious belief not to, for example, as we have seen, make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The problem is going to be that the Equality Act tries to insert protections for LGBTQ people into the Civil Rights Act of 1964, so people are protected on the basis of race, you can’t turn away a black person from a restaurant, and the same thing will be true for a gay person. If you put religious exemptions into that bill, you’re opening up a can of worms, right? So this is going to be the sticking point. You would not say that my sincerely held religious belief makes it okay for me to turn away someone because of their race. So that’s going to be the sticking point with LGBTQ rights advocates and some of these religious groups, which is, how do you create a separate set of exemptions for one protected class of people?”
